Tales Of Graces F Remastered

Platforms: PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC

Bandai Namco's Tales series is one of the longest running JRPG franchises, but although it's garnered a loyal player base in the West, it was only with the release of 2021's Tales of Arise that it had what you might call a breakthrough moment. With 2025 marking the 30th anniversary of the first game, 1995's Tales of Phantasia, it's the perfect time to reintroduce some of the earlier entries – and Tales of Graces f is a cracking first outing in a planned series of remasters.

Part of the appeal is simply the chance to play one of the best instalments in the Tales series again. Graces was close to being lost media – originally released on the Nintendo Wii as a Japanese exclusive, it received an enhanced PS3 port in the west in 2012, but has since been unavailable. That's a shame, as it remains not only one of the finest Tales games mechanically, but delivers one of the strongest and most powerful stories.

It's essentially a game about generational trauma, albeit delivered with a veneer of fantasy and colourful monsters to beat up along the way.

Things kick off in the rural kingdom of Lhant, where the boisterous young heir apparent Asbel and his friends – younger brother Hubert, family friend Cheria, and visiting prince Richard – find an amnesiac girl in a field of flowers. Naming her Sophie, the children set about trying to find anyone who knows her. It makes for a cheery, almost nostalgic adventure, a sort of anime-fied Goonies – until tragedy strikes and the friends are separated in the wake of an unimaginable loss. Years later, the key players are reunited as a political crisis draws them back into each others' orbits, one with roots in their carefree childhood days.

Tales of Graces f's magic lies is in how long you get to explore that childhood, taking what could have been a basic prologue and fleshing it out into a lengthy and important sequence. The time players spend with the characters in their youth, learning their histories and personalities, makes major events such as Asbel and Cheria's reunion or Hubert's resentful return to Lhant – after being adopted by another family for political purposes – all the more powerful when we meet them again as adults. It's essentially a game about generational trauma, albeit delivered with a veneer of fantasy and colourful monsters to beat up along the way.

Beating them up is incredibly fun, though. Tales has always championed real-time combat rather than the genre's traditional turn-based efforts, but while each title has its own version of what's referred to as a "Linear Motion Battle System", Graces still stands as one of the best overall combat systems. At its simplest, hammering the basic attack button will whack away basic enemies, but a constant trickle of new techniques and skills – dubbed "Artes" – can turn even ordinary fights into richly tactical encounters.

Up to four party members enter battle, with the player directly controlling one – usually Asbel, although you can switch to another with a tap of the D-pad. Flicking the left thumbstick while delivering an attack will determine which "Assault Arte" attack is delivered, progressing in power as laid out on a skill tree. Ally behaviour can be changed on the fly, so even if you're not directly taking control of them, you can tell party members to focus on defence, or healing, or interrupting enemies about to cast a spell. Soon you're juggling enemies like sandbags, your party a well-oiled machine – and that's just in the childhood section. Adulthood adds in more combat modifiers, such as "Burst Artes" which fill a role akin to magic in a Final Fantasy game, an "Eleth Gauge" gathering ambient energy for super-charged specials, and variable combat styles, with Asbel having different skills depending on whether his sword is sheathed or not. While it might sound overwhelmingly complex, each new quirk is introduced gently, allowing you time to master every intricacy. Ultimately, it all flows together beautifully.

It always did, though. As a remaster, Bandai Namco hasn't rocked the boat, merely made it all a bit more palatable for modern tastes. Visually, Graces f Remastered is notably sharper and has richer colour depth than the PS3 release, but retains the soft, watercolour approach of character artist Mutsumi Inomata's designs. It's all rather lovely to look at, but although it stands as the definitive presentation of the game, there's nothing here that'll be putting your 4K TVs through their paces. It's also worth noting we encountered some clipping on a few of the games' animated cutscenes (on PS5, version tested) but hopefully this will be fixed with a post-launch patch.

A few quality of life fixes polish everything further – the ability to skip cutscenes and character conversation skits makes replays a bit faster, an autosave feature in addition to manual save points means you're less likely to lose progress after a tough boss battle, and enemy encounters can be turned off entirely if you just want to make it through a particular area – but it's on the content front that this most impresses. Remastered features all the story material of the PS3 release, including the "Lineage and Legacies" epilogue, adds in some bonus scenes that were previously exclusive to Japan, and includes all DLC (barring a few pieces that relied on licenced content) for as close to a complete release as we're ever likely to see.

Tales of Graces f was a brilliant RPG experience on PS3, and remains so now. This remaster won't blow anyone away in terms of enhancing the original material, but in making one of the finest Tales games finally accessible again, it's a very welcome release.